People Have Been Hijacking Zoom Meetings And Here Is What You Need To Know
“Zoombombing” is the new trend for all those social media hijackers out there. Your school or workplace may not be immune.
Many of us are working from home, but reporting to work via Zoom conference calls throughout the day.
There are also lots of children who are checking in with their teachers using Zoom in a classroom style.
This MAY not be as safe as you would think.
Some terribly unimaginative, bored people are taking to Zoom to hijack these meeting, and are interrupting them with racist, pornographic, or rough language.
Even the FBI is getting involved. According to the New York Post, the FBI has said:
“The FBI has received multiple reports of conferences being disrupted by pornographic and/or hate images and threatening language,” said a warning from the agency’s Boston division.
There is even a report that, during a Zoom college course, a hijacker yelled the house address of the professor, amongst other foul language.
While this may be an asinine prank, it is still a pretty big deal. I sure don’t want my 12 year old subjected to such malicious hijacking.
There are whole social media sites dedicated to raiding zoom meetings, and I can’t even believe this has become a thing.
There is a young lady, out of Los Angeles, who has amassed quite a following of people, as she hijacks zoom meetings, crashes them, and then blasts the results to the world via her TikTok.
Luckily, TikTok quickly worked to shutdown her account on Wednesday.
This has done little to deter her, however. She still has some short-term plans to crash different Zoom meetings.
So, what can your schools and businesses do to combat these ‘Zoombombings’?
First of all, don’t make your meetings public. Just go ahead and make them private meetings.
Next, DO NOT share the conference links on social media. This is just inviting the creeps to infest your call.
Also, I know this isn’t ideal, but you might want to consider managing screen-sharing options, and only letting the host share their screen.
Also, you can always report any Zoom interference you have to the authorities. It might help in catching these creeps.
Be socially aware and safe out there.
